Jobless in midlife? Old brains can learn new tricks

“So, the implication is that extending success beyond the first half of life requires knowledge workers to develop a second major interest, and create their own work based on that interest. In other words, in the post-industrial information age, we need to manage ourselves.”

“No matter what their previous profession had been, the first step was to examine their lives up to that point, and to ask themselves, ‘Given what I’ve seen and experienced thus far, what is it that really fascinates me? What tugs at my mind and heartstrings? What truly lights me up?’”

The second step is to translate that personal fascination into action — real-world work that the career changer would deeply enjoy and feel empowered them for success.

The final step is to find a structure for the new work, whether it involves starting a new business or nonprofit, or creating new roles or careers.

Walton began his own career at age 15 at a news talk radio station in Hartford, Connecticut. After studying journalism at the University of Missouri, he was press aide to both Secretary of the Navy John Warner and Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr., during the Vietnam war.

Walton was one of the first 150 employees at CNN when the network launched in 1980. He was CNN’s first chief White House correspondent, and also filed the first video reports from Moscow when Soviet hard-liners staged a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.

“It was incredibly exciting, and by the time I was 40, I’d already had a 25 year career in journalism,” he says. “I started to ask myself if I was going to do another 25 years. The business was starting to change, so I thought if I was going to do something different, it would be a good time to get started.”

BABY STEPS

Walton started with some baby steps while still at the network. “Different groups would often invite me to speak on news-related topics. I’d ask if, instead, I could share with them some of the things I knew about leadership communication — how successful leaders communicate to generate buy-in.”

“Not only were they interested, but responded so enthusiastically to what I knew and shared with them, they asked if I could create executive educational programs in leadership communication. I couldn’t do that while I was working as a full-time reporter,” he says.

“But when the time came, in 1992, to decide whether to stay on at CNN for another three-year contract or attempt to turn what fascinated me into a business and livelihood, I took the plunge.”

Walton was fascinated by the idea of building a consulting practice that would allow him to teach and coach executives and professionals about what he knew. He also liked the idea of writing and traveling on his own schedule, independent of a large organization. Twenty years later, he’s taught leadership and communication for universities, corporations and government.

He hasn’t looked back once at the high-energy news business he left behind.

“At heart, I will always be a journalist. But, in reinventing myself in my early 40s, I discovered that I had talents and skills in other areas — including business — that I hadn’t previously been aware of.”